Simon Rozman at Rijeka 2019/20

Even though the title race is over in the Croatian top-flight, 1. HNL, and it may be not as tight and as nailbiting as the ones in the Premier League and they might not be as tactical as Serie A or positional as La Liga, they do have some incredible teams and players at their disposal. This tactical analysis will be a part of a series Toni Bilandžić and myself will be working on in the foreseeable future.

We aim to analyse all the 1. HNL’s teams tactics and present you with a complete and thorough overview of the league and its players. This week, the focus will be on Simon Rozman’s NK Rijeka who are currently second in the table and are probably the closest in quality to Dinamo Zagreb that Croatia has to offer.

Let’s dive straight into his philosophy.

Data analysis

Before we start with the detailed tactical analysis of the squad, performing a data analysis of the team, both on its own and within the league as a whole, will help us identify their style of play, key players as well as certain trends in Rožman’s tactics through statistics. The first graph below will tell us something about Rijeka’s preferred style of play by measuring whether they tend to rely on long or lateral balls.

The two styles we’ve identified below are direct and positional, depending on what kind of passes do the teams prefer. Quite clearly, Dinamo Zagreb and Rijeka are the teams that enjoy a possession-based build-up the most while lower-table teams generally tend to be more direct in their approach.

Next, we will take a look at their defensive style by measuring PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action) values and the average shot distance by the opponent in metres, which can be seen in the following graph. The graph differentiates between four main styles, depending on the values they recorded.

And looking at the graph, we can see that Rijeka have a mixed approach and while they generally force their opponent to shoot from distance, they will be aggressive according to the situation at hand. Sometimes, they will press high and at other times, they won’t mind sitting a bit deeper and being patient.